Baby No Longer

It was a little hard to wake up one day last week and realize my baby was a baby no longer, she was a big 3 year old! I've called her "Baby Girl" all of her life, until then. And in a way, she will always be our baby. Reality, however, led me to see that she is now past the baby stage and poised to enter girlhood--and I'd better grow up with her. We're now past potty training, and into the "I want to dress myself!" stage. She is definitely smart enough to be expected to understand, and follow, directions. No more excuses, little girlie!



What a charming, funny, full of life little person she is! She has such a big personality all the way around. 3, going on 13 I do declare. Jere's already talking about polishing up his shotgun! She's so sparkly and lives with such a total immersion in the moment that she's a pleasure to share the fun things in life with. Just... don't ask about the owies!

So, here are the highlights of the big farm girl birthday party, in pictures!!

End of school! And other notes...

Yes, we have reached the end of the school year! What a joy to see our children growing up and learning. And what a relief to not have school assignments every day! I love teaching them, watching them learn so many new things, and learning alongside them (yes, I'm learning too!), but I'm also glad for summer break.

End of school year party! Jaron finished 2nd and most of 3rd grade, and the other two did preschool work. Hooray for them!

Here are a few random glimpses into our lives...

Occasionally the boys' parakeets are allowed to fly around the house. One day they decided to join us for lunch. We discovered parakeets don't like rice. 

Jere built this shelf for a client's trophy buck, and also did the chinking in this fancy log cabin.

Happy birthday to Jaron!!! What a big boy he's getting to be. 

Delighted with a nice, new, binoculars. A gift I was happy he got, since one of our big subjects for the next school year is birds and other flying creatures!

Things are going pretty well around here. We have broiler chicks in our basement right now, which will hopefully provide meat for the coming year in a couple of months. Our cow and heifer look like they'll both be calving in the next month or so. The cute little garden is all planted. We decided on only enough garden to provide fresh veggies through the summer this year, since I doubt I'll be up to canning much over the time Baby is supposed to come! With one of Jere's sisters getting married, I have some serious sewing to do in the next month. But thankfully I have nothing else to do for it besides show up early with a camera.

Baby seems to be doing well, growing and kicking just like he or she is supposed to. We did have an ultrasound to make sure we didn't have another repeat of Jaron's hernia, but the tech was not able to tell us if we are having a boy or a girl--much to my disappointment! As for how I'm doing... well, the end of July can't come quickly enough!

Raising children has its challenges, but it has its fun too. This morning the power went off suddenly, so I did a few non-electric things and waited for about 10 minutes before letting Jere know. I might have waited longer if we hadn't had chicks that need a heat lamp. He called me and said that he'd had the boys recently helping him with some electrical things, and taught them to turn the outside (main) breaker off and on. Sure enough, the main breaker was switched off! One of the boys confessed to it and both were educated with the importance of leaving electrical stuff alone unless under direct supervision. *smile* Life is a never-ending adventure!

Missing from the action...

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since my last post. And I just haven't been able to keep up.

SOOOO, biggest news first, to explain! There's another little Hege planning to join the clan the end of July! I've been fairly sick so far, so that's part of the reason I haven't been saying much. I don't feel much like writing, taking pictures, or fooling with getting pictures loaded onto the computer. Or doing anything else, for that matter. The children are very, very, very excited about a new brother or sister, though they're all voting "sister" at this point. We have to continually remind them that we can't choose--that's God's job!--and we'll be happy for whatever he/she happens to be. Please pray for a healthy baby!

Let's see... our puppies were all sold and are gone. Whew! Whisper has been removed from our family since it seemed like she had a vicious tendency, and had it out for any cats we tried to have around. However since then our other dogs got in a fight with the neighbor's dog, on the neighbor's land, and so it looks like we're going to have to get rid of the other two as well. Which we're very sad about, as we like our dogs a lot. But, such is life.

Little Miss with the last puppy waiting for it's owner to come pick it up.

The first two eggs from Jaron's chickens. He was SO excited!

A "normal"crazy at our house--all three kiddos decided to try their hands at combing Mommy's hair. Hmmm, good thing my head is tough!

November 4 was Treasure's "Angel birthday". Jere had flowers delivered--3 red ones for our children with feet, and one white for the baby with wings. He's such a SWEET man!

Little Miss had a birthday, which we celebrated with a little friend of hers who is only a couple of hours younger. They are just too cute together!

From there, life was kind of a blur of nausea until Christmas, when my family came for a visit. They came loaded with food and fun, and didn't let me do much of anything except give directions on where to find this or that. It was so nice, and the first time we were all together since Jaron was a baby! Unhappily some sickness came along too, so a few people were rather out of it during our time together, but we had a good time together otherwise.

Making lefse. A Hendrickson family must-have for the holidays!

All together!

 Now for some random shots.

Jere came in one evening to find us all asleep in one bed! Guess everyone was tired...

The upstairs bathroom mostly ready for paint.

Jere's been working hard on our house. He had the basement bathroom pretty much done before our Christmas company, so that was nice to have two bathrooms with lots of people here. And it's VERY nice to have a bathtub again after more than a year without! After Christmas he tore into the upstairs bathroom and it's ready for a paint job now. Yippee! Only wish I was feeling up to doing it... At least now all the major tearing apart stuff is done in the house, so it just remains to finish getting things put back together. We'd like to push it pretty hard and be pretty much done by late April, but we'll see. Any volunteers to come help us?!!!

And the latest big happening was Eliott's birthday! Jere made the cake, from scratch (we did buy the icing, though...) and I was so proud of him! It ended up a pretty cute cake, I think. And Eliott is really, really happy to finally be 5, as now he doesn't have a scheduled afternoon nap. Li'l sis is taking that just a wee bit hard, but she'll adjust.

Not sure what else there is to say at this point. We're hoping my nausea will let up soon, but know it could be there for another couple of months. We have several activities on the radar, such as an EMS conference and another SALT trip to Haiti for Jere, but not real sure yet. I'll try to keep things posted a little better, but no guarantees! :-)

Happy Birthday Big Boy!

I know, this post is LONG overdue. But, our big boy turned 7 on the 14th! Can't hardly believe I'm a mother to a 7 year old, but it looks like it's fact. :-) Wow. At his request we had some family for supper, and I made an ice cream cake for the first time. It wasn't the prettiest cake I've ever made, but it was yummy!

Here's the birthday boy and his cake!

 

One of the gifts...

 

That looks like fun!

 

Great-Grandma B. blessed us with her presence--here she's taking a peek at the newest little cousin.

 

Eliott enjoyed the box the grader came in!

 

The next morning we had a Lego party and put together one of the Lego toys Jaron had gotten.

 

 

We've been keeping EVER so busy these couple of weeks. Jaron finishes all his school but math this week, and is scheduled to finish that up next week. We're all excited to see the school year coming to a close for another year--though my excitement is mostly because we should be getting next year's books in the mail this week, and once school is over I'll hopefully be able to find time to plan out next year's lessons! Hooray! We had our last science class gathering Sunday evening, and I'm hoping to do something similar again next year, so I have that on my mind a lot too.

 

We've been spending a bit of time working in the yard, trying hard to get the landscaping done so we can plant grass. The garden is finally plowed, now it just needs to dry up enough to till so I can get my plants in the ground. The garlic is already about a foot high, and I'm really glad we made the effort last fall to plant it. The tulips we put in the flower garden didn't survive the winter, but the ones we temporarily planted in the regular garden did. I hope that doesn't become a habit, as I'd like to have the tulips by the house! 

Ending of vacation...

One day while we were in Colorado, we had a birthday party for my mom and Jaron, and splurged on making an old family favorite--Spring Rolls! (They are a Vietnamese food that my parents learned to make while working in a refugee camp around the time I was born.)

The birthday party!

Two peas of a pod!

We left Colorado on Wednesday morning, spent that night in Iowa, then went from there straight to La Crosse to go to the booksale where we ordered all of our school books for the next year. Jaron will be doing Second AND Third grade work, and Eliott will be starting Kindergarten. I'm looking forward to the summer break here in a couple weeks, but I love teaching school and am anxious to get the next school year organized!

And while in Colorado my sister let me play with the Lilla Rose hair accessories she sells, and totally sold me on them. Totally. I love the flexi clips for myself and for Leanna. Suddenly, even long, fine hair like mine is easy to deal with! I came home planning to have a party to show a few others what I found, but then decided to go ahead and become a consultant. They really do work.

A Sapphire blue flexi in Leanna's hair. Isn't it stunning?!

 

So, here is my info if you're interested in hearing more about it:
www.lillarose.biz/KickapooCountryStyle
https://www.facebook.com/KickapooCountryStyle

Birthdays and other blessings

Whew, it's been awhile since I posted anything! And we've had a lot going on in the last few weeks. So I'll try to catch up with things.

The two biggest events of the last couple of weeks have been birthdays!

Jere turned 34!

 

And Eliott turned 4!

His prized Bulldozer cake...

 

 

Our house is coming along, SLOOOWLY. But, it's coming! We had someone come spray foam insulation in the ceiling in our bedroom's new vaulted ceiling. So now our house is insulated--a help in this colder weather we've been having.

 

We now have all the sheetrock hung (sorry, no pictures yet) and a friend is doing the mudding for us. I'm hoping to have a painting day and get the upstairs painted before Jere gets back from Haiti. Oh, yes, I don't think I'd mentioned that before. Jere's going to Haiti as part of his involvement with the SALT board, leaving on Thursday, and he will be gone for a week. It's going to be a bit challenging to have him gone right now, but it seems I'm going to have some support from some of our friends at church so that should help.

And, last but certainly not least, I'm getting stronger. I think. As soon as I think I am I go do a bunch and get SO tired that it lays me out for a couple of days. Oh well. I finally got one curtain made! It was the simplest one in the house, and took me 3 days.

The kitchen window with the new curtain.

Today I worked up enough energy to touch up a few spots of paint on the kitchen cabinets that needed it, and painted the trim on one window upstairs. Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to do my work again one day and not feel like I ran a marathon afterward!

We are getting a mild blizzard today. I enjoy watching snow blow! Though the wind seems to seep in all the little cracks everywhere. But the drifts outside are lovely!

Have a wonderful, blessed day! And please remember to pray for us over the next 10 days. For safe journeys for Jere, and safety and sanity for those he leaves behind!

Jaron's birthday!

Here are some pictures from Jaron's birthday party! He thought turning six was the greatest things that ever happened! We grilled hot dogs and ate outside. What fun! I think the rest is self-explanatory...

Happy birthday to Eliott!!!

Our little Eliott turns 3 today! We actually had his party yesterday, as today we knew was going to be extra busy with getting ready to go on our northern trip. So here are a few pictures of the party, then I need to go get started with my packing and planning!

The birthday boy and his Monster Treads 'Gator cake!

YUMMY!!!!